When you open your own business, you have so much to do that you can feel quite overwhelmed.
Working 24/7 is a recipe for burnout and a sign of a lack of time management.
Managing time is a critical skill you can learn and involves activities like scheduling, prioritizing, and automating in order to make the most of the hours you have available.
It means working smarter instead of harder.
Here are five effective time management tips to put into practice.
Create a Schedule
As a busy entrepreneur, you can’t rely on your memory alone.
Take 30 minutes with a notebook and jot down a list of everything you need to do each day.
It may help to carry around the notebook and jot down tasks as you do them.
Once you have a good grip on what you need to get done every day, you can start setting up your schedule.
There are many free time-management schedules online that you could use.
Think about when you work best and schedule your tasks accordingly.
Tackle your high-priority tasks when your mind is freshest.
Schedule more repetitive tasks, like answering emails or returning phone calls for the time of day when your energy levels are lowest, like after lunch.
Take your schedule for a test drive for a month and see how it works.
You can tweak anything that didn’t work for you.
Learn to Prioritize
You need to prioritize if you don’t want to miss out on doing what could offer real value for your business over the long term.
If you focus all your time on unimportant issues, you won’t have time for the important ones.
When you learn to prioritize, it helps you to say “no” to issues that don’t really require your attention.
- Decide which tasks need your full attention and have serious repercussions if you don’t complete them as they need to come first.
- Decide which tasks you must do that do not have to be done immediately.
- Decide which tasks are important but that you can delegate as long as you monitor progress.
- Decide which low-priority tasks you can delegate to others.
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Conduct a Time Audit
Do you know how much time you spend on each task?
If not, conducting a time audit can help you to identify which tasks eat up too much of your time.
Set up a time audit form with a column for each of the following: Task; Allotted time (mins); Time spent (mins); Saved or wasted time.
Filling in this form helps you to see exactly how much time you spend on a task and whether you actually complete it in less or more time than you allocated for it.
Toggl is time-tracking software with an intuitive interface that offers an alternative to using time-sheets.
You can go one step further and categorize your tasks in order of priority to determine whether you’re spending too much time on low-priority tasks you could delegate.
Use Time-blocking
The well-known Pomodoro Technique, also called time-blocking, works like this:
- Choose the first task on your priority list.
- Set a timer for 25 minutes and work within that time to get it done.
- Take a five-minute break.
- Go on to the next task on your priority list
- Set the timer for 25 minutes and do the next task.
By splitting up your workday into 25 minute work periods with five minutes breaks in between, you can resist interruptions and retrain your break to focus.
Replace Multitasking with Automation
Smart entrepreneurs use technology in business to save time.
Thanks to all the apps available today, you can automate many tasks.
What you have to do is to find out what processes or activities you can automate that would help you to save the most time.
For example, if you feel you spend too much time trying to schedule meetings, the Meetingbird app allows multiple parties to put in available times when trying to set a meeting and automatically schedules a time that works for all the parties.
If you battle to keep track of projects and coordinate with employees, Asana, Slack or Trello could be a valuable option.
Conclusion
Using time-management techniques and the right tools can help you to make the most of your time.
This is extremely important when you have to run your own business.
This usually involves jumping between tasks, attending meetings, taking calls, and make careful business decisions.
Managing your time effectively from the start will help you to establish the habits that will contribute to your success over the long term.
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